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NASA to Privatize ISS Missions?
Brian Young writes "Nasa is looking for private companies to take over the business of transporting astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station. "'Certainly this is an opportunity for the new space companies,' said Jim Banke, head of Florida operations for The Space Foundation industry trade association. 'They've been lobbying NASA hard for something like this for years.' NASA hopes to supplement, and eventually replace, crew and cargo flights to the space station that had been planned for the shuttle fleet." One has to wonder how much money can be saved by NASA that can be put to use elsewhere, such as trying to figure out how to put together a manned mission to Mars, if they no longer have to dish out the tremendous amount of money that getting astronauts and cargo to the ISS requires."
How about we fire the retro rockets and bring it down? Do we really want to put more money into the ISS when there are so many more interesting projects to pursue (Moon, Mars, deep space exploration)? Apart from creating jobs, just what have we gotten for the billions that we've spent on the ISS?
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
Perhaps they should change their name to "Not Attending Space Anymore"
Read "NASA decides to scrap ISS, blame private industry for not picking up the ball."
Really, how much cheaper can we expect a private company to do this? After all, NASa just needs to do it, while a private company needs to do it and turn a profit. And, seeing as how all "NASA" hardware is built by private contactors, how much of a difference are we really going to see?
with base camps...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
despite the obvious troll:
if they'd spent the trillion on space instead of iraq, people would complain it was better spent on education- which it would be. It would be better spent on a lot of things.
But the truth is, we ultimately need to go to space, we ultimately need education, we ultimately need a lot of things which is why we have budgets and its not an all or nothing deal for one particular endeavor.
Once an operation becomes routine, I think it should be privatized. In this case, NASA does a better job at developing the new (and highly risky) missions (like the one to Mars), and less well at doing routine things like lifting payloads into orbit. I'd put this akin to commercial freight hauling and less in the vein of the Apollo missions. Given this, getting someone in the commericial market to do the hauling should be cheaper, quicker, and probably safer than having the government do it. Sort of like the difference between the USPS and UPS... perhaps 100 years ago when delivering packages was a very risky endevor with zero profit margins having the government deliver them was logical, but it's hard to see the reason now. Perhaps we're turning that corner in the orbital lift business this decade.
But why would NASA outsource the very skills they'll eventually need for future Moon, Mars, and beyond missions? They'd win the immediate budget battle but loose the war.
eventually people will begin to ask "what is NASA needed for? Can't we just have this company do it?
When folk ask that, the answer will be "research and exploration, like they've always been good at."
...and offered to fly their new taikonauts to the ISS?
I bet NASA woould suddenly receive all the funding it needed, ASAP, and no questions asked!
Despite what people claim "privatizing" something does not necessarily entail a cost-savings. I'm not saying that it won't here but people (on /. and elsewhere) have a tendency to assume that private companies are necessarily cheaper/faster/better than a public function. This is the mantra of both Republicans and Libertarians (as well as many Democrats).
Consider the costs of privatized schools, privatized prisons, privatized utility companies (California anyone?) etc. In many cases of privatization the promised cost savings never appear but people still press ahead as if it will necessarily come.
NASA already contracts out much of their work. In a sense contracting for the whole shuttle rather than each part is not an illogical step. I just hope (for the sake of NASA and my tax dollars) that they privatize the flights if and only if real savings emerge not the expectation of savings.
With NASA not even putting people in space, instead paying others to, it will be yet another step in furthering NASA away from... well anything involving space.
NASA's mission is "to understand and protect our home planet; to explore the Universe and search for life; and to inspire the next generation of explorers."
As far as I can tell, transporting cargo and people to a space depot isn't part of NASA's mission. If they can pay a private company to take care of logistics so that they can focus on research and exploration, more power to them.
But if you were to plot journey cost vs safety, you'd find strong correlation, that is, flights are getting both cheaper AND safer. Of course, corrleation does not imply causation.
It's a matter of flight rate. As more and more flights took place and it became a part of everyday life, people got a better understanding of how to make airplanes fly more cheaply and safely. The hope is that the same thing will happen with spaceflight.
if they no longer have to dish out the tremendous amount of money that getting astronauts and cargo to the ISS requires.
They will still pay the tremendous amount of money that getting astronauts and cargo to the ISS requires. The only difference is that the money will be going to a private company instead of doing it in-house. What did the OP expect - that the private sector will do something like this for free?
Of course, it is possible that a private company can do it cheaper. However, since there are currently no private companies that can do this, it is equally possible that it will cause no end of scandals, court battles, disasters and bankruptcies that may force NASA to pick up unexpected bills. The good thing about doing things in-house is that a large number of variables can be trusted to be under control without the overhead of armies of lawyers, miles of contracts, thousands of accountants and unbelivably expensive insurance.
I would like to see the insurance company that would insure a small space company against the possibility of astronatus being stranded in space, or a failure to deliver setting a space program like the ISS back so long that it would have to be scrapped. Who can even provide an objective cost of such losses?
This may not be all bad but I don't advise any holding of breath. We have some insightful comments, yet judging by the scores, the moderators know nothing about economics or monetary policy. This is hardly surprising in view of the fact that it is not generally taught. The accepted belief system for most citizens is that money came from God or the Big Bang and as populations grow and society becomes more complex, we have to do more and more with a fixed amount of money, necessitating a sort of social, economic and environmental triage. What makes this silly model even sadder is the implicit assumption in all discussions of cost, that money once spent is simply gone. This is clearly contrary to everyday experience, yet we as a species simply don't often make these connections without serious study once a belief system is established and widely held. Sorry guys, but it is a fact that when the human resources, raw materials and infrasructure are available, then claims of a government being unable to afford something it purports to want or that the citizens want, is nothing more than Orwellian doublespeak meaning "We don't want to do that." The struggle to get by in a world of limited money helps keep people off the backs of the unelected real government that detests and fears democracy. Who has not noticed how infrequently the elected government does what was promised in the election campaign? Look into this or struggle, fight or pray for more money. When can we move on? The choice is up to us.
You don't deserve to be upmodded for this post. You should be flogged.
We've gained a lot of knowledge, albeit, not quite the knowledge intended to gain, gained nonetheless.
We have learned to construct a sizeable structure in space using equipment that will not exist in 5 years. ISS is the most criminal waste of money in the name of science of all time.
The iss is a platform for developing and testing long duration mission technology. The goal is to reach the point where the technology for a mars mission exists (it doesn't today), and has been tested in the harsh environment of space
The occupants aboard ISS aren't testing anything. They are marooned campers trying desperately to keep alive between resupply flights. The Russians shouldn't be involved at all considering their negative progress in democracy, human rights, and nuclear proliferation.
The iss itself is not an initial experiment in low orbit long duration, Mir already showed us that can be done, it carried on in that role for 15 years. ISS is a platform for hosting more advanced experiments and development.
Mir was a veritable carnival of danger - spacecraft collisions, explosive decompression, deadly fires. It taught the US never participate again in Russian lead ventures.
The ISS is proably going to die uncompleted. The biggest lesson learned for most of the partners, dont depend on the usa when large expenditure projects are involved, projects that extend beyond the 4 year election cycle hence they become suceptible to the short term political cycles of the usa.
Blame it on the USA. Perhaps it is going to die because our partners (besides the Russians) don't have manned space programs at all. The program has survived 25 years, 4 presidents, and $100G in funding. Seems to me that is consistent enough. The US deorbit its modules and walk for the program. That would leave a Russian module and the Canada arm remaining.
But, the bottom line, if the program is not capable of managing completion of the ISS, then there's no way it's going to produce a manned mission to mars that operates without resupply for the timeframes involved.
The assembly of ISS was very well managed by NASA. It is gone perfectly. The problem is they must use the most dangerous manned space vehicle ever launched.
an ill wind that blows no good
I'm amazed that no one has bothered to note the inherent biased assumption that privatization will save money.
There are tons of examples that suggest that privatization, far from being the be-all/end-all cure to gov't bureaucracy, results in even shoddier service and actually costs more in the end.
One can pick out tons of examples: States that have privatized the investigation of welfare fraud find that it costs more. Privatized prisons not only cost dearly, but result in barbaric treatment for the inmates (not that state-run prisons are any prize!).
The US military has privatized many combat tasks to private mercenary corporations -- but does anyone think that privately hiring now-ex Green Berets and Rangers and paying them hundreds of dollars per day as mercenaries is really cheaper and more effective than paying them $30K/year as members of the US Army?! The Army is having to pay out huge bonuses to elite troops just to keep them from leaving the service to go work for the private mercenary corporations -- taxpayers pay to train them, then we pay through the nose because of privatization. Halliburton and mercenary corporation stockholders may benefit by military privatization, but the taxpayers certainly do not!
We can also have ample evidence that privatization doesn't work in health care. The US has the world's most expensive health care, yet Canadians live 4+ years longer and the cheaper Canadian system outperforms the US privatized health care system in almost every measure. (Standard disclaimers: The US system performs great -- expensive, but great -- if you're rich and/or have good insurance, and the Canadian system is far from perfect; but on a national scale there is no comparison -- Canada's public system is cheaper and far more effective than the US private system.)
I think there are very, very few people that will claim that Bush's privatization of FEMA resulted in an effective Hurricane Katrina response.
Privatization may be effective in some rare instances, but it is far, far from the cost-saving, effectiveness-creating cure-all that the article's lead-in portrays it to be.
I seriously doubt that Scaled Composites or other 'up and commers' will have any serious shot at any dollars from this. I think we'll see more of the typical Big Business orientation that the US gov't tends to align itself with.
If NASA can't afford it, they can pay someone else without a lot of experience in this field to do it cheaper? Of course...
Is the world gone crazy?
Privatization is always a scam. ALWAYS. It is always backed by well-placed insiders who want to line their pockets by providing the same-or-lesser service at greater cost. If you expect any such scheme to work out well for taxpayers while the current GOP is in power, you're a rube.